“That you should christen it at the very first opportunity,” he murmured as he dipped his head. He took her lips in a scorching kiss as he slid the jacket down off her shoulders. She shrugged out of the garment, then slid her hands up his arms, enjoying the dip and flex of muscle as he started to unbutton her blouse.
His lips drifted across her jaw to her neck. “I hadn’t heard that one,” she admitted breathlessly as he opened her shirt, kissing his way over her collarbone and down to the lacy edge of her bra.
“Oh, yeah. It’s a tradition.” His hands caressed her back, unsnapping her bra strap and drawing the garment down her arms. He turned briefly and fired it like a slingshot at the top of a filing cabinet set against a wall. “You have to christen the desk, the chair—the floor.”
He dipped his head to take a rosy peak in his mouth, and she trembled, heat flooding her as arousal built. “Oh, I had no idea,” she murmured, then moaned as he drew down on her nipple, nipping gently with his teeth before laving it with his tongue. He cupped her other breast, alternating his attention between the two.
“Oh, yeah,” he said huskily. “Then we have to christen my office.”
“We do?”
He rose up and kissed her, bearing her back down on the surface of the desk. “Uh-huh.” He pulled his sweater over his head, and she sighed as his muscled chest came into view.
“I like your traditions,” she said, trailing her hands over his pectoral muscles. He grasped her hands, kissing each before placing them over her head so that she clasped the rim.
“You’re going to need to hold on,” he whispered, and she shuddered. He drew the palm of his hand down from her neck to the waistband of her skirt. He waggled his eyebrows.
“There are lots of them,” he told her, and she frowned, trying to keep track of the conversation and not drown in sensation.
“Lots of what?” she asked as he rolled her hips to the side so he could access the zipper of her skirt. The sound of her zipper in the small office was loud and full of carnal promise. Her nipples tightened, and she could feel herself getting damp.
“Traditions,” he told her as he slid her skirt down her legs and off, along with her panties. His eyes flared when he saw her garter belt and stockings. “Holy smoke.”
She smiled at his appreciation. “What other traditions?” she prodded him as she turned back to face him.
“Oh, we have to christen each new moon,” he said, dipping low to kiss her navel. She heard the slide of his zipper, heard the soft thump as his jeans hit the floor. “We have to christen each sunrise,” he murmured as he kissed his way farther down her body. “Oh, and every time we open a new cereal box. Lots of traditions.”
She shuddered as she felt his breath against her and her head arched back. She had to remind herself they were in a site office of a construction zone. What if one of the builders turned up? “Uh, Hunter, should we be doing this?” she murmured, eyeing the door. It was locked, but still, if the site supervisor turned up for any reason... She had no idea how busy a construction site could be on a Sunday, or whether people were likely to walk in and interrupt what was going on in the about-to-be-christened practice office.
She glanced down, and Hunter met her stare, his brown gaze wicked with promise.
“Trust me,” he murmured. “I’m a doctor.”
He dipped his head, and then she didn’t care who saw or heard what as her husband showed her just how much he knew about the female anatomy. All she knew was that she loved this man, loved his sexy traditions, as well as the quirky little fireworks he set off each time they made love. He challenged her, he protected her—but more than anything, they were true partners. Mates for life. Her orgasm swept over her, and she cried out her release as Hunter entered her, and then it was starbursts and sparkles everywhere.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from WAKING THE SERPENT by Jane Kindred.
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Waking the Serpent
by Jane Kindred
Chapter 1
Hello vertigo and free-floating anxiety, my old friends. Phoebe let the familiar nausea-inducing miasma wash over her as the lights in her Sedona ranch house flickered and went out. The latter might be reasonably explained by the summer storm rolling over the desert, downed power lines, the fact that the old house had bad wiring, maybe—if it were anyone but Phoebe. But she’d driven around the bend of reasonable and onto the unimproved county road of completely certifiable a long time ago.
The dead and Phoebe had an uneasy truce. She’d given up trying to ignore them, because looking like the crazy lady who occasionally talked to herself was infinitely preferable to public outbursts worthy of an exorcist. She agreed to help them find justice, or closure, or peace—as long as they backed off when she told them to.
The electrical activity of a rainstorm actually brought them out. Or gave them energy to manifest, anyway. They’d been mumbling about her all day, the spectral aura of a migraine telling her somebody wanted in.
The shade trying to step in right now was new at it, making the room swim around Phoebe in gut-churning waves.
Phoebe stood over the couch with a death grip on the back of it, teeth clenched to keep from losing her lunch on the faux leather upholstery, trying to focus on the room through the dark bob of her ponytail swinging in front of her eyes. “For the love of Mike. Just step in already. The damn door’s open.”
As if in contradiction to her statement, the kitchen door slammed behind her, yanked by the air being sucked through the house in the wind tunnel created between the front entrance and the screen door opening onto the back porch. There was nothing better than the smell of petrichor stirred up by an oncoming storm. Phoebe had left the doors open to let it clean out the house and freshen things up. Given her housekeeping habits—and Puddleglum’s litter box habits—any little bit helped.
The storm-dark sky visible through the windows in front of her lit up for an instant with a horizontal bolt of lightning, and the answering crack of thunder came swiftly.
“I think he set me up.” The uncertain murmur had come from her own lips. The shade was in.
“It’s okay.” Phoebe spoke aloud, though it wasn’t necessary. Someone else talking through her was bad enough without answering in her head. She had some mental dignity left. “You can talk to me. You’re safe here.”
“Here?” The answering voice seemed young
ish but Phoebe couldn’t get a handle on the gender. “Where’s here? I don’t know where I am.”
From experience, Phoebe knew it was better to prevaricate a bit. Especially with the newly dead. “You’re at the hospital. Do you remember what happened to you?”
Her heart began to hammer—the shade’s fear—as the answer came. “I was supposed to meet someone. But I... Something went wrong. Oh, God. Why is he here?”
Phoebe had to center the shade in the present before panic took over and it got stuck on a loop at the moment of its death. “Why don’t we start at the beginning, hon? Can you tell me your name?”
“I...I can’t... I think... I’m not sure.”
“That’s okay. Don’t worry about that right now. Do you remember who you were meeting? Where were you supposed to meet?”
“I got a message, and I... He isn’t supposed to be here. Oh, my God. He set me up.”
Before Phoebe could bring the shade back to center, her throat began to tighten as though a pair of strong, gloved hands had closed around it. Fantastic. A violent murder and the shade was going to relive it inside her. There was no use fighting. She had to let the shade go through it—let it make Phoebe go through it—before it would release her.
Her lungs, however, were harder to convince. They fought like hell. Adrenaline shot through her bloodstream, a last-ditch, futile attempt at fight-or-flight, as Phoebe stumbled backward, hands convulsing at her throat. Before she could lose consciousness from the air being squeezed out of her, however, the back of her head hit the hardwood floor, beating it to the punch.
* * *
Rain spattered the entryway through the screen door as the storm broke at last. Phoebe lay and listened to it for a moment without moving. She hadn’t felt the shade go. But, like being blackout drunk, it had left her with a serious hangover. The ungrateful little wretch.
Howling at her like a Klaxon from the coffee table, her cell phone announced there wouldn’t be time to indulge her headache.
Phoebe crawled around the couch and jabbed the speaker button to let it know who was boss. “This had better be good.” Her voice sounded like she’d been gargling kitty litter.
“Ms. Carlisle? Phoebe Carlisle?”
Phoebe cringed at the booming, deep baritone. “Yeah, you got her. Who’s this?”
“I was given your name for representation.”
Her stomach gave a little lurch of protest at his volume and Phoebe pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’m a public defender. If you need an attorney and you can’t afford legal assistance—”
“Jesus. I don’t need a fucking Miranda recitation.” Wow. Charming. “I need a lawyer. Now. I’ll pay your standard hourly rate.”
Despite his rudeness, Phoebe’s ears perked up at the sound of money. Being an assistant public defender wasn’t exactly a high-paying gig. But she wasn’t about to let this jerk get the upper hand. She needed to be the one in control of any potential client relationship. She’d refused clients before when she knew their anger issues—or their woman issues—were going to prevent that. Which didn’t help the pay situation any, but it was where she drew the line.
“How about you stop swearing at me and tell me what kind of lawyer you—”
“I don’t have time for sweet talk. I’m at the Yavapai County Jail. Rafael Diamante.”
The line went dead while Phoebe’s mouth worked, poised on a pointless rebuke of her potential client. Rafael Diamante. Why was that name familiar? She’d seen it somewhere in her newsfeed this morning.
Phoebe pulled up the browser on her tablet and thumbed through her feed until she found the post from the Sedona Red Rock News.
Local Businessman Brought in for
Questioning in Mystic Murder.
Barbara Fisher, a self-described psychic medium who offered palm and tarot readings from her residence on Cedar Road, was found strangled in her home early this morning. An anonymous Sedona PD source confirmed entrepreneur Rafael “Rafe” Diamante was discovered at the scene—apparently intoxicated.
Unless two people had been strangled in Sedona this morning, the victim had to be Phoebe’s step-in. And Rafe Diamante—Phoebe had seen his name on signs all over town: Diamante Construction and Excavation. He owned half of Yavapai County. Why he would want Phoebe to represent him, she couldn’t fathom. Was this some kind of joke? Common sense and her conscience told her to stay far away from this one. Representing the accused killer of someone whose shade she had just hosted had to be a pretty big conflict of interest. But neither common sense nor her conscience was in the driver’s seat of her Jeep as she headed to the county lockup in Camp Verde.
Copyright © 2016 by Jane Kindred
ISBN-13: 9781488004780
Warrior Untamed
Copyright © 2016 by Shannon Curtis
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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